


Chocolate on the Train

by FloreatCastellum



Series: Missing Hogwarts Moments [5]
Category: Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling
Genre: Angst, Canon Compliant, Gen, Light Angst, Missing Scene, POV Remus Lupin
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-09-14
Updated: 2019-09-14
Packaged: 2020-10-18 15:48:23
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,808
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20641685
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/FloreatCastellum/pseuds/FloreatCastellum
Summary: Remus Lupin has been asked to supervise the Hogwarts Express, in anticipation of possible Dementors. He didn't mean to fall asleep, but he was so very tired...





	Chocolate on the Train

Remus was sure that when he had been asked to supervise on the train in case the Dementors decided to board, Dumbledore had imagined him… supervising. Patrolling the train, probably. 

But Remus had got his career in teaching off to a flying start by collapsing into the corner of the last compartment of the train, his muscles aching and his head spinning, utterly exhausted from his transformation just the night before last. 

He would get up. He would. He would patrol the train once it was on the move. He would just rest his eyes for a few moments…

He was vaguely aware of voices, and a whistling sort of noise, and the sway and judder of the train. One of the voices sounded familiar, but he continued to snooze, drifting in and out of awareness, heavy with dreamless sleep. 

The voices became clearer - they were squabbling, slightly panicked sounding.

‘I was looking for Ron-’ a little girl’s voice exclaimed. 

‘Come in and sit down-’ another girl’s voice was saying. 

‘Not here! I’m here!’ came another voice, and at this one he opened his eyes to almost complete darkness; the lights had gone out, and the Dementors must be close.

‘Ouch!’

‘Quiet!’ Remus called, forcing his aching body to rise. Silence fell, and Remus cast crackling, heatless flames into his hand - he needed to keep his wand free if Dementors were close. The light from the flames flickered across small, frightened faces, but Remus barely looked at them as he stood, his eyes fixed on the door as he felt the cold creeping towards him. 

The door slid slowly open, and Remus at once thought of the moon and heard his own howls of agony, immediately remembered hundreds of revolted expressions and vicious comments, and then, as a hooded, rattling figure reached out a decaying, slimy hand, he heard Alice Longbottom’s voice, shaking and hushed. 

‘Oh, Remus… Something awful has happened… James and Lily…’ 

One of the girls was gasping, and a dark hair boy swayed and collapsed to the floor, twitching and shaking. 

‘Remus, please, sit down… Peter… Peter found Sirius, but…’ 

Remus forced the memories out of his mind, thought fiercely of Dumbledore telling him that he would be allowed to attend Hogwarts, and stepped over the twitching boy, placing himself between the Dementor and the students. ‘None of us is hiding Sirius Black under our cloaks,’ he told it harshly. ‘Go.’ 

The Dementor turned it’s void-like, rasping face towards him, and Remus felt the awkward, heavy weight of James’s coffin on his shoulder. He thought of James, Sirius and Peter telling him that they didn’t care what he was, that they would help him, and softly muttered, ‘Expecto Patronum.’ 

He did not allow his Patronus to fully form, but the silvery light pressed against the Dementor, which gliding unpleasantly away, Remus taking steps forward to push it out. As he looked outside the compartment, he could see other Dementors, disembarking the train - could hear the shouts and squeals of the students. 

‘What’s wrong with him?’ one of the girls was shrieking behind him. ‘Ron! Help him!’ 

The train began to rumble, the lights flickered back on, and Remus closed his hand to smother the flames and turned to check on the boy who had collapsed.

He was face down on the floor, shuddering as the twitching movements slowed. A bushy haired girl and a red-haired boy were crouched beside him, but they seemed afraid to touch him. Remus, his stomach cold and his hands shaking as he started to feel a familiarity, stepped over the boy once again, leant down and rolled him over.

He had seen that face before. Many times. Grinning and scowling and smirking and laughing and mumbling with a cigarette in his mouth and yawning and finally, the very last time, cold and pale and still on a metal trolley in the morgue. 

He swallowed. ‘He’ll be all right, he’s just fainted,’ he told them, rising and stepping back. 

He watched as the children called his name and shook his shoulders and tapped his deathly pale face. It was extraordinary. The same mess of dark hair, the same jawline, the mouth, the same cheekbones. Dumbledore had warned him, but perhaps he had not quite believed him… 

‘Harry! Harry!’ 

His eyes were beginning to flutter - even from his position several feet away, Remus saw them, piercing green. 

‘W-what?’ 

He saw Harry look around, still pale faced and clammy looking, trembling. He was heaved back into his seat by his friends, and he looked nervously to the door. 

‘What happened?’ he asked. Even his voice was the same. ‘Where’s that - that thing? Who screamed?’ 

Remus was grateful that he could turn his face away as he searched through his robes for the chocolate. 

‘No one screamed,’ said the red haired boy anxiously. 

‘But I heard screaming-’ said Harry, his voice shaking. 

The sound of the chocolate snapping made them jump. Remus kept his face calm and measured as he looked directly at Harry. 

‘Here,’ he said, handing him the chocolate. He tried not to think about the last time he had seen him, cradled against Lily’s chest, because she said putting him to bed was easier if they let him fall asleep being held. ‘Eat it. It’ll help.’ 

Harry took the chocolate, gazing up at Remus with Lily’s eyes. ‘What was that thing?’ he asked. He still looked very pale. 

Remus looked back down at the chocolate, and handed some to the other children. ‘A Dementor,’ he said, giving a piece to the small girl, who looked equally pale. ‘One of the Dementors of Azkaban.’

He crumpled up the empty wrapper and shoved it into his pocket, glancing back at Harry. He was still holding the chocolate, looking rather shaken. 

‘Eat,’ Remus told him again. James always had to be asked twice to do anything too. ‘It’ll help. I need to speak to the driver, excuse me…’ 

He left the compartment, sliding the door shut behind him. The jerking movement of the train was a good cover for why he felt the need to brace himself against the wall as he stumbled away, his breath feeling unusually rapid and shallow in his throat. 

He wasn’t sure he would be able to do this. He wasn’t sure he could hold himself together. Sirius’s face staring at him from every newspaper had been bad enough. 

He walked the length of the train, feeling as though he had gone back in time, as though he had left James behind him, and maybe he could turn on his heel and run and grab him by the front of his robes and shake him and say ‘I told you! I told you that you were too trusting! I told you nobility would get you nowhere!’ 

But it was not James. It was a shaken young boy Remus had last seen in red pyjamas, yanking on his exasperated mother’s hair. Third year, Dumbledore had said. Thirteen. What a long time. 

He reached the front of the train, and rapped his knuckles on the driver’s door. ‘Yep,’ came a gruff voice. 

Remus entered - a spade was shovelling coal into the engine of its own accord. The driver, a plump man with a remarkable handlebar moustache and a striped cap, looked at him grumpily. ‘Nasty bastards aren’t they? Weren’t meant to come on the train, just pass by the windows.’ 

Remus nodded. ‘Dumbledore did think they might seize the opportunity. How far are we from Hogwarts?’ 

‘Less than fifteen minutes,’ the driver replied. 

‘Could you possibly send a message ahead? Remus asked. ‘A boy was taken ill; he’s all right but he might need some medical attention when he arrives.’ 

The driver gave a shrug and a nod. ‘What’s his name?’

‘Harry Potter.’ 

The driver’s head snapped round to look at him, and he gave a low whistle. Remus smiled weakly in response. ‘Didn’t realise I had such precious cargo,’ he said. ‘But I suppose he’s about the age, innee?’ 

‘Quite,’ said Remus. ‘I’d best return - if you wouldn’t mind?’ 

‘Say no more,’ said the driver, raising an easy hand. ‘I’ll send an owl along. Here-’ he said in a hushed tone, as Remus was turning to leave. ‘Does he really have the… y’know…?’ He wriggled his finger at his own forehead. 

‘I… I didn’t see,’ said Remus. The driver looked disappointed. 

‘I’ll send the message now,’ he said heavily. 

Remus thanked him, and returned back down the train, feeling significantly better as he saw students in familiar school robes through the compartment windows, the train speeding away from the Dementors. 

He returned to the compartment with his things, and the children, and paused in the doorway as he realised with amusement that they were all still holding their chocolate, letting it melt into their fingers rather than eating it. ‘I haven’t poisoned that chocolate, you know,’ he told them.

They all seemed to look down in surprise, and there was a moment of silence as they all ate. Colour seemed to return to their faces. 

‘We’ll be at Hogwarts in ten minutes,’ he said reassuringly. He looked over at James’s son. ‘Are you all right, Harry?’

It was the same expression James had got when Sharon Dawkins loudly insinuated hurtful things in the Great Hall, the same redness that crept up from the neck and flushed along his cheekbones, the same tightness in the jaw and the glance away. ‘Fine,’ Harry said. 

Remus nodded at him, though he was sure he hadn’t seen. He wanted to tell him that he looked just like his father, but he could think of a million reasons not to do that, so instead he strode over to his belongings, and gathered them up, pulling his battered case down from the luggage rack. 

‘I will leave you all to get changed into your uniforms,’ he said, and he left again. 

Later that evening, as he forced himself to eat at a polite speed and tried not to think about how strange it was to see the Great Hall from the angle of the staff table, Professor McGonagall leaned over to him. 

‘Mr Potter refused to stay in the hospital wing overnight.’ 

The corners of Remus’s mouth twitched. ‘Did he?’

‘Yes, thank goodness you gave him some chocolate, Poppy was most impressed. He seems quite all right now, anyway.’ 

Remus’s eyes found Harry quickly at the Gryffindor table. He was sitting with those two children still, the three of them must be good friends, and he was laughing, watching the red-haired boy gesticulate across the table.

‘Did Albus warn you?’ asked Professor McGonagall quietly. 

He glanced at her briefly, then back towards Harry. ‘Yes, of course.’ He paused, collecting himself. ‘Remarkable.’ 

‘Will you tell him?’ she asked. Her expression was unreadable. 

‘No,’ said Remus. ‘Best not.’


End file.
